Working Safely During COVID-19 (Part 5)

Tips For Keeping Your Business Safe During a Pandemic

Hopefully, you've been following our blog-series on how to keep your Milton Keynes business safe during the COVID-19 Pandemic.  If you've missed it, previous posts are HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.  Today, we are continuing with ideas for how to keep your commercial property for rent Bletchley safe for employees and customers.

As always, the advice in this series is by no means intended to be legal or expert.  We have taken our suggestions largely from HM Government’s document “Working Safely During COVID-19 in offices and contact centres”, which you can read for yourself HERE.

A major benefit to renting your commercial space in our Milton Keynes Business Centre is that we will take care of keeping common areas such as reception, staircases and toilet facilities clean and sanitary.  There are some things you and your employees can do to help us though:

• Stagger break times to reduce pressure on facilities.
  
• Use safe outside areas for breaks and spread out.
  
• Encourage employees to bring their own food and drinks, to ease pressure on lunch facilities and limit traffic through hallways, entrance and exit points etc.

There are specific government guidelines for cleaning after a suspected or confirmed case of COVID-19, which can be found on the government website.  Otherwise, all office and industrial work areas and equipment should be cleaned frequently and between uses - paying particular attention to frequently-touched surfaces such as door handles and keyboards.  It might be worth issuing all staff with their own cleaning supplies so that they can clean items frequently.   At Bucks Biz, we request that you take all waste off site with you, but please make sure that you do so safely and hygeinically.

Deliveries and Collections

Special consideration should be given to inbound and outbound goods from your workshop or commercial space.  Think about your pick up and drop off points - can you streamline the process and do you need to increase signage and markings to let people know?

• Minimise unnecessary contact - can you take advantage of electronic pre-booking?
  
• Consider reducing frequency of deliveries - for example by ordering larger quantities less often.
  
• Where possible, have single workers load or unload.  Where two people are needed, use a 'buddy' system to make sure they stay in the same pairs.
  
• Encourage drivers to stay in their vehicle / outside the building wherever possible.  Can they call you on arrival and someone go out to meet them and/or the delivery at a distance?

Bucks Biz makes it easier for you to comply with the kind of advice given in this series, by offering flexible licences that allow you to easily upgrade and downgrade your space as and when your business requires it.

We provide office space for rent in Milton Keynes, with units available for all sectors, to suit a wide range of requirements.  From small one-person start ups, right up to large spaces fit for 100 people (to be socially distanced!) we have the perfect base for your business.

We are more than just space to rent too.  We are a community of businesses all eager to help each other.  Throughout the pandemic, we have supported our residents to secure funding where it has been available and in adhering to social distancing and safe working practices, throughout our centres.